The success of the “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” sequels and the upcoming finale of the “Blade” trilogy have established comic book movies as a potent box office draw.

Still, despite the increasing market for the films, the books that inspired them remain relatively untouched.

Bizarro Wuxtry, a comic book and collectibles store located on College Avenue above its musical counterpart, does a brisk trade in comic books with their established fanbase.

Named after Bizarro World, an evil alternate dimension from the Superman comics, the store didn’t emerge as a separate entity until 1989 — the same year Tim Burton’s first “Batman” movie was released.

“Batman” gave Bizarro Wuxtry an overall comic sales a boost, but it’s not a trend that Devlin Thompson, the store’s manager, has noticed in recent years.

“Aside from the ‘Batman’ movie, the superhero movies have never had much of an effect on sales,” he said.

“We’ll get the occasional customer who drops in and wants to read ‘Spider-Man’ because they saw the movie, but the comics are hard to get into,” he said.

Richard Neupert, a professor of Film Studies, said the comic book movies will eventually have an impact on comic book consumption.

“I think it should send people back to comic books again,” he said, adding the surging popularity of anime, as well as reruns of superhero cartoons on stations like Cartoon Network, could also have an effect.

Neupert said the comic book movies’ appeal lies in both their pop culture status and the nostalgia they inspire.

“It’s like Saturday morning cartoons,” he said.

Overall, sales of comics have been in a downward slope since 1950, Thompson said.

As prices of comics rose and access to other types of entertainment opened, comic books lost the massive popularity they enjoyed in the 1930s and ’40s, the so-called “Golden Age” of comics.

Santana Flanigan, a second-year law student from Conyers, has read comics since he was a child.

Flanigan, who shops at Bizarro Wuxtry about once a month, said he enjoys comics for the artwork and their world view.

“Comics are just a creative spin on what the world could be like,” he said.

Brad White, a junior from Flower Mound, Texas, has enjoyed several of the movies, especially the “X-Men” films, and said he was looking forward to the “Batman” film coming next summer, but said he probably won’t be making any trips to Bizarro Wuxtry.

“I knew a lot of friends as a kid who liked comics, but it was never my thing,” he said. “It’s cool to see it come back.”

Flanigan said he simply hopes others will eventually turn to the original comics and urges people to give Bizarro Wuxtry a chance.

“I think it’s a cool, neat (place),” Flanigan said. “Everyone should check it out.”